Will the NFL Join the Media Revolution?

The NFL is the last major US sport holding out. MLB, NHL, and NBA all have deals in place to bring you whatever game you want, live, on your PC.

But, if you’re a football fan, and want to see the game of an out-of-market team, then you have one option. Get DirecTV and then, on top of that, shell out $300 for NFL Sunday Ticket. What if you don’t care about the other 14 games going on? Too bad. Pay for them anyway. Want a package to just watch your team? You can’t have one. Want to buy a particular game and, heaven forbid, watch it on your PC? No way!

Oh, unless you live outside the USA (Game Pass). That’s the one caveat the NFL has allowed. You can watch a game, online, pay-per-view style, if you have an IP address that exists outside the borders of this country. Yes, you can watch it via….ahm….let’s say….non-sanctioned streaming services. I won’t list them, but they aren’t hard to find. Or, if you do live in this country, they will sell you a radio (IE audio only) broadcast of your team that will stream live.

Will they change this coming season?

That’s what I have been trying to look into. And, the short answer is, there is nothing being said at this time. I emailed the NFL and got no response. I checked with a couple of fellow fans/bloggers/online TV users and they have heard nothing. The season is still a couple of months away from beginning and a lot can change, but at this point it doesn’t look promising.

Right now they seem to be steadfastly stuck in the 1990’s. While the other major US sports pass them by, the NFL continues to leave revenue on the table. Do these corporations never learn? Will they continue to push their old, broken business models all the way into irrelevancy? Does the NFL really think they are immune to this? They may be sadly mistaken. Not that I think the NFL will fade away, but they need to get their online act together before it starts biting them in the wallet.

3 thoughts on “Will the NFL Join the Media Revolution?”

I’d love to be able to watch live games on PC, especially if they allowed you to watch games from other markets or blacked out games. That is one of the only hurdles to moving away from my home town–the lack of being able to watch my home town team every sunday, even if I was no where near the coverage area where that game was broadcast.